Prophet

by Helen Macdonald, Sin Blaché

Genres: Sci-fi Action & Adventure; Military Sci-Fi

Synopsis

From the extraordinary minds of award-winning and New York Times–bestselling author of H Is for Hawk Helen Macdonald and first-time author Sin Blaché, Prophet is their electric debut, a tantalizing adventure fusing noir, sci-fi, and a slow burn romance—set in a universe just one perilous step from our own.
Adam Rubenstein and Sunil Rao have been reluctant partners since their Uzbekistan days. Adam is a seemingly unflappable American intelligence officer and Rao is an ex-MI6 agent, an addict and rudderless pleasure hound, with the uncanny ability to discern the truth of things—about everyone and everything other than Adam. When an American diner turns up in a foggy field in the UK after a mysterious death, Adam and Rao are called in to investigate, setting into motion the most dangerous and otherworldly mission of their lives.
In a surreal, action-packed quest that takes Adam and Rao from secret laboratories in Colorado, to a luxury lodge in Aspen, to the remote Nevada desert, the pair begins to uncover how and why people’s fondest memories are being weaponized against them by a spooky, ever-shifting substance called Prophet. As the unlikely twosome battles this strange new reality, Prophet’s victims’ memories are materializing in increasingly bizarre forms: favorite games, beloved pets, fairground rides, each more malevolent than the next. Prophet is like no enemy Adam and Rao—or the world—have ever come up against.
A tension-shot odd-couple romance, an unflinching send-up of corporatecorruption, and a genre-bending tour de force, Prophet is a triumph of storytelling by a new writing duo with a thrilling future.

Release date: August 8, 2023

Publisher: Grove Press

Print pages: 529

Sample

CHAPTER 1

The room she ushers him into smells of stale cigarettes and air freshener. The decor is ’80s mil-spec Holiday Inn. Dark-green carpet, striped armchairs, a smoked-glass table, a print of two F-15s trailing vapour set high in a gilded frame. The scream of their engines outside has been softened in here to a dark, low-frequency roar.

Miller pulls off her jacket, drops it over the back of a chair, winces at the half-drunk coffee cup on the table, and looks apologetically at Rao. Her eyes are the colour of airmail paper, the wrinkles at their corners attest to years of sun. Her hair is bleached, tousled on top, very short at the sides and back, and her business suit hangs far too perfectly on her spare frame to be worth anything other than a fortune. There’s a Cartier tank solo on her left wrist, gold studs in her ears, and she is trying so hard to be friendly Rao feels his teeth ache.

They sit.

“Can we get you anything?”

“A drink.”

“Mr Rao,” she chides. “I can offer coffee, tea, or soda.”

“Water,” he says tightly. “No ice.” She’s amused by that—and for the right reasons. She can read an insult even when it’s placed gently in front of her. Not a lot of Americans possess that talent, in Rao’s experience.

“There’s a cooler in the corner.”

She doesn’t expect him to get up. He doesn’t.

“I expect you don’t know why you’re here.”

“Why I was escorted from prison by two MoD AFOs and driven to an American airbase in the arse end of England? No. I don’t. They didn’t want to tell me.”

“They didn’t know. Do you want to guess?”

Ugh. Rao stares at her day-for-night reflection in the top of the smoked-glass table between them, the curve of her jaw, the interrogative tilt to her head. “Respectfully, fuck off. Tell me what you want, and please attempt to do so without vague requests for me to perform for your amusement, or I’ll find my way back to my cosy remand cell and get on with the rest of my life.”

“It’s like that?”

“Yes, it is.”

“Ok,” she says mildly. She reaches into the bag at her feet, pulls out a file, flips it open. “Sunil Rao, thirty-six years old, born 1974, Kingston upon Thames, UK. British citizen, OCI cardholder. Parents Himani and Bhupinder. Mother works for Christie’s. Father’s family business, fine jewellery.” She reads on, raises an eyebrow. “Very fine. Educated St Elgin’s, BA in art history at St John’s College, Oxford. Six years at Sotheby’s, fraud and attribution, then MI6.” She glances up, smiles. “Very patriotic.”

She’s definitely looking for a rise. Which could mean she’s not in possession of enough information to push him in any other way. More likely it means she’s purposefully testing his patience. Both possibilities make it less likely they’re going to put him on a plane back to Kabul in the next twenty minutes, but that doesn’t make her strategy any less exhausting.

“Eight-week joint operation in Central Asia, last fall.” Her voice softens. “Your partner at the DIA spoke highly of your abilities.”

“Did he. I’ve quit.”

“We’re not unaware.” She frowns at the file. “Then Afghanistan. Where things went less well, I see. It says here you became unreliable.”

“Highly.”

“It says here there was an overdose in a hotel room.”

“There was. It wasn’t a cry for help.”

Her response to that is silence, but not the kind he’d wanted to provoke. It’s thoughtful. “Could you tell me about the incident in rehab?” she tries, gently, after a while. “It’s not in the file.”

“Isn’t it?” He holds her eye. “I punched an obnoxious cunt in group therapy who was lying through his teeth.”

“I heard it was far more than a punch.”

Rao spreads his hands flat on the tabletop, breathes in once through his nose, exhales.

“Why am I here?”

“Are you fit enough to work?”

“I doubt it.”

She lays the file on the table between them, pushes at a corner to straighten it. Drags a finger down the cover—a slow, considered movement. “We think we need you, Mr Rao.” She doesn’t sound happy about it. “We’ve no one with your skill set.”

“Yeah,” he snorts. “I guessed.”

She raises an eyebrow. “Guessed?”

“Yes.”

She walks him down a corridor to an empty conference room where a Stars and Stripes hangs limply by a projector screen. Set out along the length of the long central table is a line of cups, mugs, plates, and bowls. Miller runs her eyes over them, looks at him expectantly. He knows what this is now. Rubs the back of his neck at the familiarity of the setup. Recalls the light slanting from the windows, cigarette smoke rising through it, his father’s question as he gestured to the trays of jewellery on the desk. Which, would you say, is the most interesting of these, Sunil?

“Kim’s Game, is it?”

“No, Mr Rao,” she says.

A radiator ticks and hisses. Rao buries both hands deep in the pockets of his jeans and waits to be asked to do what he knows he’ll be asked to do.

“I’d be grateful if you could examine these objects and tell me if any seem unlike the others.”

“Third from the left,” he says. “White mug.”

“That quickly, by eye? Could you tell me what’s different about it?”

“It’s wrong.”

“Wrong?”

“Simplest way I can put it in the circumstances.”

She brings the pad of her thumb to her closed mouth, rests it there for a few seconds, pulls it away.

“Mr Rao, we’d like to show you something. I think you’ll find it interesting. If you could follow me, there’s a vehicle waiting outside.”

The urgency of whatever this is is suddenly so apparent Rao stops in the corridor to read a random noticeboard. Baseball practice, commissary tours, missing dog, zip-lining trip, garage sale, pizza night, motorcycle competition. He glances over at her, registers her clenched fists, her silent agitation, and with a burst of pettiness reads it all again.

Their steps echo on wet tarmac. Suffolk is buried in fog: thick, inconstant air that glitters and shifts around the base lights in the dusk. Miller drags a parka from the back of an unmarked Land Cruiser, hands it wordlessly to Rao. Inside, their driver is tense. He tries to start the ignition while the engine’s already idling, hits the indicator far too early for the junction. It’s not Miller’s presence. He’s spooked. Rao splays his hands on his thighs, looks down at his fingers, and knows that he is too. There’s a lie to all this that isn’t the usual bullshit dissimulation, and the taste of it is beginning to press on his mind. He looks out the windows to push it away. Lights in the mist. Passing bulks that are barns and chicken farms, smears of headlights over roadside hedges. After half a mile they turn up a potholed farm track. A few hundred yards later they halt at a high-security fence set in concrete blocks. A guard steps forward with a torch. After a brief negotiation he opens the gate; the rutted track behind it veers back towards the base.

The driver slows, cuts the engine. Miller gets out and opens Rao’s door, informing him it’s a three-minute walk. He clambers out into dank, still air and follows her, trudging over rows of fleshy leaves that squeak underfoot. Wet clay clumps on his Converse, making each step a little slower, a little more effortful than the last. He has no idea what this is. Wonders what he’s being taken to see. A crash site, a corpse, a cache of arms, a burned-out car. No. None of those. Perhaps a pub? Yes. Let Miller be taking him to a pub. A pub with an unexpectedly fine selection of single malts and a blazing log fire. He knows she isn’t, but he’s imagining that blessed, forbidden idyll when they reach the crest of the rise.

He stops.

“The fuck,” he breathes.

Below them, stranded in fog, right in the centre of the field, is a small, one-storey building with a panelled facade of shiny sheet steel. A circle of floodlights haloes it in soft, candescent air. The scale of it is peculiarly uncertain. For a fleeting moment it seems to Rao no bigger than a matchbox, as if he could just reach down and pick it up. There’s no doubt what he’s looking at. It’s an American diner. Not only does it look like the most generic roadside diner ever built, but there’s also a red neon sign over the entrance that reads AMERICAN DINER. The lights are on inside. But no roads lead to it, there’s no parking lot beside it, and no sign of disturbance in the crop growing around it except the narrow, muddy trail that runs from their feet straight to its double doors.

“Not right, is it,” says the voice next to him.

“No, it isn’t,” he says. He rocks on the balls of his feet in the mud, licking his lips at the sight below. “Not the usual at all, this.”

“Is it like the mug?”

“Yes. But—” He blinks, finds himself unable to finish the sentence. Looking at the diner is like watching water swirling down a plughole, and he balks at chasing the intuition any further. In his peripheral vision there’s something that could be a smile.

“The mug you identified came from inside. But you already know that, I think. Want to take a closer look?”

“Lead on.”

“It’s seventy to eighty hours old,” she announces as they walk downhill. Her voice is easier now. This has become a briefing, the nature of which is to turn a thing into someone else’s problem. “To clarify: that’s how long it’s been in this location. It’s weathered and aged in a way that would date it, ordinarily, as a midcentury building. But we don’t know how old this structure is.”

“It’s seventy to eighty hours old.”

“You’re sure?” she says.

“Call it a hunch. The lights?”

“It’s not connected to utilities. And there’s a zone around it that’s apparently of interest.”

“To whom?”

“All of us.”

“It’s an us, is it?”

“I hope so, Mr Rao.”

“And who are we, exactly?”

“I can’t lie to you, can I?”

“You can lie as much as you like. I’ll just know you’re doing it. You want me to go inside?”

“Go ahead.”

He walks to the door. The air smells of fried onions and behind that the faintest hint of diesel. He stretches out a hand, brushes the chrome with two fingertips. The metal is cold, bright, beaded with water. When he pushes, the door swings easily. He steps in. Looks down at his muddy sneakers on the black and white tiles, hears Miller behind him.

He tried to describe it, later. Said that it felt like getting into a hot bath. Not the temperature change but the suddenness of the alteration, how deep it hit, the welcome of it. He’s never been inside a fake before. He’s never experienced a fake like this before. His skin itches with wrongness. But warring with the wrongness is a surge of elation running up his spine, a quickly unfurling warmth in his chest. After a few seconds, he’s surprised to find himself close to tears.

There’s no one inside. It’s deserted.

It feels full of people.

“It’s lovely in here, isn’t it?” he says.

She’s not sure how to respond. Her arms are folded, her expression complicated. “Look around, Mr Rao. Take your time. The griddle is hot. I wouldn’t advise touching it.”

He sees a turquoise counter faced with checkerboard tiles. An illuminated jukebox in one corner. Red banquettes, steel chairs with padded seats and backs. Framed photographs across the cherry-coloured walls. Elvis, Sinatra, Marilyn, Bill Haley, the Everly Brothers, a Gilda’d Rita Hayworth. These, Rao realises, after they snag on his eye more than once, are wrong in a very specific way. The more he looks at them, the less recognisable their subjects become, and isn’t that interesting. He walks up to the nearest. Blinks. Diner lights reflected in his eyes against a face that isn’t quite Sinatra’s. It could all be in his head. He knows he’s not right. But he doesn’t think so; he doesn’t think that’s what it is. He looks over his shoulder at Miller. Judging by the stance she’s taken by the door, he’s not going to be given all night in here. He decides, reluctantly, he has to let this particular mystery wait.

The more Rao looks about, the more wrongness is revealed. Behind the bar, the griddles are indeed on full—he holds a palm just above one to check—and gleaming with oil. There’s a row of torn paper orders stuck along a narrow steel strip on the wall—eggs over easy scrawled on each one—but there’s nothing else. No sink, no grill, no plates, no cooking implements. Scores of coffee mugs, flasks, no means of making coffee.

“And no bathroom,” she says, watching him. “What do you think?”

“It’s like a model. A full-size prop. What’s this thing about the zone outside?”

“There are no foundations. It sits on exactly six inches of sand. And exactly six inches of sand extend from it on each side before it meets the soil of this field.”

“What kind of sand?”

“We’ve not had time to analyse. It’s only been here for seventy to—”

“Eighty hours.” He’s looking at the ruby cursive glow of the neon sign over the counter. SERVICE, it says. There are no wires. None at all. “So, you’ve shown me this, and before you’ll tell me anything more about what it is, you’ll need me to sign an NTK declaration, yes?”

She nods.

“In blood.”

“It’s cold tonight, Mr Rao. Let’s eat. They can bring us food from the Officers Club, and I’ll do my best to be helpful.”

Miller picks at a Caesar salad while Rao devours a plate of chicken fajitas. When he’s done, she picks up her coffee, sits back in her seat, and looks at him speculatively.

Here we go, Rao thinks.

“So, the term your former employers used about you, Mr Rao, and they were very keen to explain how off the record it was, was ‘fucked.’”

“Just Rao will be fine.”

She considers her cup for a while, swirls the coffee a little, watches it circle.

“It must have been hard.”

“What?”

“What you’ve been through.”

He closes his eyes. “Let’s not, shall we? I’ve had an awful lot of that lately. If you want to play ‘let’s make friends,’ let me ask the questions.”

“Go ahead, Rao.”

“What’s your department?”

“Defense.”

“Job?”

“Investigator.”

“Ah,” he says. “Columbo.”

“No dog, no wife, and I loathe cigars.”

“Where did you grow up?”

“Wyoming.”

“Where did you get your watch?”

“That’s none of your business.”

He grins. “No, it isn’t. Does this thing scare you?”

She blinks, twice. “The diner? Yes.”

“Good.” She’s looking at him very seriously. He wonders what she sees. She’s treating him less like a live grenade now, more like a terrible liability, which is more than fair. He wonders if she has a son somewhere. A difficult one. Something in her expression tells him she might. Yes. He pulls at a loose thread at the hole in the cuff of his sweater, rubs it idly between finger and thumb. “You can get your need-to-know form out now. I’ll sign it. Do you have a pen, or should I open a vein?”

“I have a pen.”

He signs. Doesn’t bother reading it. He’s signed them before, and none of them mean shit.

“So what’s the deal?”

“There’s no deal, Rao,” she says. “This isn’t transactional.”

“Not literally. Figure of speech. What’s going on here?”

She bites her lip, speaks carefully. “There’s been a death on base. Surprising and suspicious circumstances. I’m here to act as liaison between UK and US investigations.”

“But you’re really here for the diner.”

“My liaison role’s not cover, Rao. But we’re not solely concerned with the diner. I’ve been tasked with assembling a small team to investigate other recent events at this location. They might have some connection with the diner, maybe with the death. You were recommended highly.”

“By whom?”

“You’ll be working with Lieutenant Colonel Adam Rubenstein.”

“Fuck, is he not dead yet?”

A wry smile. “No.”

“What’s the point of this team, if anyone asks?”

“Investigation. There’s a body, and a lot of people need answers.”

“And what’s its actual role?”

“Investigation. Just a touch more complicated. A series of objects have turned up around this site. Mostly inside the wire. No one knows where they came from. Base operations assumed they were a practical joke. Then the diner appeared.”

“What kind of objects?”

“Various. A surprising number of children’s toys. The first was a Cabbage Patch Kid doll picked up on the main runway during a routine FOD walk. The last was a ticket stub for a performance of The Philadelphia Story at the Arlington Theatre.

“Awful play.”

“Deflection isn’t a helpful strategy,” she says, “but I agree with you. I should note that this particular production was from 1982.”

Rao yawns. It’s a stress response. She misinterprets it, looks at her watch, and frowns. “It’s late. You were denied bail because you were assessed as a flight risk, Rao, so I’m afraid there’ll be a guard outside your dorm. But we’re not placing you in the confinement facility, and you’ll be more comfortable here than in Pentonville. Do you need anything?”

Rao shakes his head. He doesn’t need anything. He wants several things right now, but none would be good for him and none will be given to him. He watches her nod at the uniform sitting three tables away, watches him rise, waits to be escorted away.

CHAPTER 2

See, the main problem with the way Sasha’s life shook out is that she hadn’t really planned for this to happen. Truthfully, speaking from the heart and all that crap, she hadn’t really planned for a lot of stuff, but this really took the cake. She could have probably handled the loss of a limb better than her uptight older brother getting some poor woman pregnant. Not that disappearing for five years and losing her brother’s number after she got the happy news could really be counted as handling anything well.

What was she supposed to do with that information? Grab his wife’s shoulders, shake her carefully, scream at her to get the fuck out before the baby dropped? It was too late for that. If Sasha had wanted to do something for her, she should have done it before they got pregnant. Should have done it before the damn wedding.

They weren’t really a family equipped with healthy coping mechanisms. Growing up like they did, they’d learned early that if they had a problem the best thing to do was to keep it to themselves. Bottle and bury it.

Then she’d kind of forgotten about the whole pregnancy thing during those years. She’d gotten into her own shit, bottled and buried too deep to remember that she was supposed to keep her head above­ground. So, five years later, with an impressive array of gambling debts and a few scars nobody needed to know about, Sasha found herself at her brother’s doorstep. Funny thing about family, right? No matter what happened, neither of them could ever manage to fully burn that bridge down. There was always enough left over to cross.

He didn’t even say hello when he opened the door. Just looked at her, looked at the suitcase leaning against the back of her legs, watched the taxi drive away. “How long do you want to stay?” he asked.

“How long you got?” she answered.

“I’ll get the spare room made up,” he told her and stood aside. Never offered to take the bag, but she wouldn’t’ve let him anyway. “Lunch is nearly ready, I think. Go meet the family.”

That’s about when Sasha remembered about the pregnancy and how cruel she’d thought the whole thing was. Locking his wife up in a prison made of something she guesses he’d call love. “Yeah, lunch sounds good,” she said.

“This is your aunt Sasha.”

Do you offer to shake a five-year-old’s hand when you meet them? Probably not, but there was something about the kid’s eyes that made Sasha want to. She fought it.

“Hey, kid. Wow, you’re like a whole person these days, huh? Last time I saw you, I don’t think you were fully cooked yet.” She grinned down at the little boy sitting at the table with a perfectly square PB&J in front of him. He didn’t respond. Nobody in the kitchen did. Her brother, his wife, the kid all just looking at her like Sasha just spoke Italian at them and danced a jig.

“The last time your aunt was in town was when I was pregnant with you,” her brother’s wife explained.

The kid nodded. “Oh.”

That’s all he said. He ate his sandwich in silence while Sasha avoided answering questions about what she’d been up to for the last few years. He sat quietly, watching with big brown eyes while the adults in the room skirted around how long Sasha was going to stay. As far as she could tell, they landed on “indefinitely” with some underlying threat of that being yanked away as soon as there was a whiff of bad behavior.

Bad behavior, with her brother, was sort of a gray area. Smoking inside the house, talking about her artist friends, playing music he considered subversive: all those were Bad Behavior. But if she sat outside on the porch even though all his neighbors could see her smoking, which she kind of assumed would freak him out, that was okay. If she brought him and the wife to an art gallery in the city, managed to score them some comped passes, then that was culture. That wasn’t bad behavior at all. And if some of Sasha’s favorites happened to come on the radio, well, what was he going to do about it?

It was a lot like living with their dad again. People cope in their own ways. Sasha went crazy and moved to the city way too young. Her brother went crazy and turned into a slightly softer version of their father. Shit happens. She never blamed him for how he turned out, anyway. None of that was their fault. Sometimes, and only sort of, Sasha wondered if her brother knew that he wasn’t to blame. There was no way she was ever going to find out, though. Easier to bottle it all up. Way better to bury it.

CHAPTER 3

“Did you get breakfast?”

Rao nods as they walk. He didn’t. He probably should have. He’s certain he’ll die if he doesn’t find coffee in the next ten minutes.

“I’ve got a meeting, so I’ll leave you to it. In there,” Miller says, halting in the corridor and indicating an unmarked door to their left. Rao hesitates. He’s learned a few lessons over the years about walking blindly into rooms like these. “Rao, please get something to eat,” she adds, smiling wearily, gesturing again at the door.

He pushes at it. Walks into an open-plan office. Fabric cubicle dividers, worn grey carpet, mesh desk chairs. People staring at screens. Some wear suits, others BDUs. Four of the latter are frowning over something on a breakout table nearby. Porn, maybe. No. He looks about. Has he been assigned a desk? Has Miller stuck him in here so people can keep an eye on him?

No to both. He’s looking for a spare desk with a screen to hide behind when he feels a tiny, sliding dislocation in his sinuses and chest. Something’s not right in here. It’ll be something he’s dragged his eyes across but not properly seen. An item from the diner, he guesses.

It’s not. It’s Adam.

Lieutenant Colonel Adam Rubenstein, bent over a file at the far side of the room. Just another dark-haired man in a cheap suit. There are at least five of those in here. All just like him, none of them anything like him.

He looks the same, Rao thinks, but seems somehow unfamiliar. Perhaps he shouldn’t be surprised. There was a Rao before Afghanistan, but Rao’s not sure how much of him still exists, which makes the Adam he’s looking at now seem a souvenir from an impossibly distant past. The shoulders of his jacket still sag. His hair is just as short and ostentatiously poorly cut. The collar of his shirt is tight, the knot of his tie too snug against it. Adam has always dressed as if he’s trying to stop himself from giving anything away. The scruff on his jaw is a worrying sign. This must be a serious situation if Adam’s not found time to shave.

He remembers Adam’s last words to him. Late afternoon in Tashkent, just under a year ago. Bright, landlocked light beating through plate glass into the departure hall, dragging like sandpaper on Rao’s appalling hangover. Weak black tea in paper cups. More than a little awkwardness. “Take care,” Rao had said as he rose to walk to the gate. He’d judged it the safest bet, but as soon as he’d said it, he knew it sounded as if he were doubting Adam could look after himself. Adam had nodded once, then lowered his eyes to the cartons of cigarettes under Rao’s arm and raised an eyebrow. “You know those are fake,” he’d said. Not a trace of a smile, but Rao’d been cheered. Adam’s peace offerings, on the rare occasions they’re given, have always had something of the nature of knives.

Rao doesn’t say a word as he approaches. But Adam wouldn’t be as good as he is if he hadn’t noticed Rao long before he reached his desk. He doesn’t look up.

“You look like shit,” he says flatly.

“Yeah, thanks,” Rao answers. “You look nondescript.”

That makes Adam raise his eyes from the file. They’re dark, schooled into the usual faint hostility he uses to dissuade conversation. Rao thinks back, recalls the very few times Adam’s smiled at anything he’s said. There’s a sense of humour behind those eyes: that’s an immutable fact. He’s made Rao laugh in the past. His habitual impassivity, his immunity to jokes and jabs—it’s a control thing, Rao’s always assumed. The man is wound up tighter than those intricate Black Forest clocks, and Rao is reasonably sure that Adam himself did the winding. Intelligence officers like him hold their own keys. That’s the point of them.

He gives Rao a once-over. He’ll have already taken in everything he needs, but now he’s decided to extend Rao the courtesy of being involved with his assessment. For Adam, this is an act of consideration bordering on generosity. “Glad to see you standing,” he says. He probably means it, Rao decides, looking down at the file Adam’s holding, the faint, black-inked fingerprints decorating its edges. Writing implements rebel in Adam’s hands. Rao suspects he affects their ink like he does most people’s blood pressure. “I didn’t mean it literally,” Adam adds. “You can take a seat.”

Rao sits. “Are we just going to talk about my current state of being or are you going to tell me about that file you’re ruining?”

“This is a copy,” Adam mutters, pushing the papers over to Rao. “Doesn’t matter what happens to it so long as it doesn’t leave the room.”

Here we go again, Rao thinks, feeling the vague headache he’s had for days blossom into deep, bruising pulses behind his eyes. He pushes his fingernails hard into his palms. It’d be good to ask Adam what he knows about Rao’s state, his place in all this, and so many other things, but there’s no way he can do that without a sickening amount of vulnerability. Later, Rao decides. Maybe. When his head isn’t pounding so badly and his eyes can focus properly. He picks up the file, opens it, flips through it helplessly. “Adam, I might look like shit, but I feel far worse. Just tell me what it says.”

“Three days ago, a civilian contractor working grounds maintenance found the body of an SNCO in an unscheduled bonfire in the southeast sector of the base. Senior Master Sergeant Adrian Straat.”

“Dead before the fire?”

“No.”

“Cause of death?”

“Fire.”

“Is that in the file, or are you fucking with me?”

“Both, maybe. That’s a separate file. Miller’s told you about the objects. They appeared about the same time as the corpse over a four-hundred-meter radius. No one admits to placing them or seeing them being placed. They’ve been bagged and inventoried. Miller wants you to take a look at them after this. They’re all in the evidence room except a 1950s jeep that turned up behind a munitions bunker and a 28-gauge Browning Citori in the weapons store.”

“That’s a shotgun.”

“Yes, it is. Specifically, a Citori White Lightning Over and Under, hand built in Japan circa 1983. I’m leaving out a lot, Rao. There are details here that can wait for when you’re more able to take them in.”

“You’re handling me.”

“And I’m doing it well.”

“Fuck off. Is there any coffee around here?”

“You want coffee.”

“Don’t start.”

Adam gets up, returns to the desk with two mugs, sets them in front of Rao. Tugs at the file, extracts two stapled pages, and hands them over. The top sheet is an outline map of the base. Across it is a scattering of numbered crosses, concentrated in some areas, sparse in others.

“These crosses are where the objects were found?” Rao says, gulping down liquid so vile it’s like a slap round the face.

“Yes. The circle is the fire.”

“Should I be seeing something in the pattern?”

“Do you?”

“No. Do you?”

“No.”

“Have you been to the diner?”

“Not yet.”

“Surprised at you, Adam.”

“Rao, I got in at three a.m. off a flight from Dulles. I didn’t have time.”

“Sure, yeah.”

“I’m telling the truth.”

“Sure, yeah.”

Rao feels the grin on his face, marvels at it. He turns the page, scans a few lines. It’s as if a yard sale exploded over the base and someone had itemised the fallout.

29 Motorcycle jacket (black leather)

30 Plush dinosaur (yellow, worn condition, missing one eye)

31 Recliner chair (burgundy, leather)

32 Toolbox (varnished pine)

33 Bunch of roses (red)

34 Connect 4 game (assembled frame with complete set of counters)

35 Beanie Baby (bear, black, worn condition)

“Santa?” he suggests. “Maybe all the personnel have been good boys and girls.”

“Santa is not a plausible delivery system,” Adam murmurs. “Security cameras showed nothing except several bursts of static between zero six forty-eight and fifty-one. Before them, nothing. After them”—he nods at the map—“this.” He hesitates. “I don’t want to get Twilight Zone, but I can’t account for it.”

“I’ve always assumed Rod Serling taught you how to knot your necktie, Adam, but no, let’s—” Rao stops. Reconsiders. “Yeah. Well. I’ve been in that diner, and it was full Twilight Zone. A guy died in a mysterious bonfire and weird shit appeared all over the shop. Why shouldn’t we go down the freaky rabbit hole? Do you have a time of death?”

“Approximate.” Adam pulls another file towards him, opens it. “There are photos of the scene, if you—”

“Not now, thank you.”

“Zero six forty.”

“So when was the first one of these objects picked up?”

“Six fifty-one.”

“The Cabbage Patch doll?”

“From the flightline, yes.”

Rao sees the doubt in Adam’s eyes. He drains his mug, picks up the second, takes a gulp, and winces. This one’s even worse. He’s pathetically grateful for it.

“The diner’s mental, love. I’ve been inside it. And when we look at this Santa shit, it’s going to be mental too. There’s going to be some kind of logic to all this but I’m pretty sure it’s Twilight Zone logic and we’re just going to have to deal with that as it comes. Keep our minds open.”

“Don’t patronize me, Rao. I don’t care if it’s elves. I just need to know why and how it’s elves.”

It’s a three-minute walk, Adam informs him, to the evidence room. Hands stuffed deep in his pockets as he steps over puddles on the footpath, shoulders hunched against the worsening rain, Rao decides he’s sufficiently caffeine fortified to broach the subject of how Adam’s been.

“So, Adam.”

“Rao.”

“How’ve you been?”

“How have I been.”

“Yes.”

“Busy.”

“Busy good or busy bad?”

“Busy.”

This, Rao recalls, is what it is like to converse with Adam. “Classifiedbusy?”

Adam gives him the barest frown. “More desk work than before,” he says after a while.

“You have a desk, Adam?”

“Technically, everyone has.”

“Technically?”

“It’s more of a concept.”

“The fuck does that mean?”

“If you live long enough, you’ll end up at your desk.”

“Ah, this is a case of there being a bullet out there with your name on it, is it? A bullet, a desk, a grave?”

“Always waiting.”

“You’re one dramatic cunt.”

“Yes, Rao.”

“A desk,” Rao breathes. “Did you fuck up?”

“No, I didn’t fuck up.”

“No escándalo? Got caught in a compromised position in an embassy broom cupboard?” Rao represses a snicker: it emerges as an almost inaudible squeak. The very idea of Adam having a fumble somewhere. Impossible.

“No.”

“Don’t tell me you got tired of shooting people? Fucking hell, Adam. Did you find god or something?”

“Rao, you asked me how I’ve been. I’ve been busy.”

“Of course you have. Christ. Catching up with you is like trying to break into Fort Meade. Don’t know why the fuck I bothered asking in the first place.” Rao grins. A pair of F-15s passes low overhead, both bristling with ordnance. “Well?” he says when the noise allows.

“Well what?”

“Aren’t you going to ask me how I’ve been?”

Adam shakes his head. “You’ll tell me.”

The evidence room is in a squat, redbrick building at the far end of the base. Two sad-looking laurel bushes flank its entrance door; the black-painted guttering above gurgles with rainwater. A leftover from the war, Rao surmises. The old RAF operations block? Yes.

Adam leads him to the basement and marches straight to a door at the far end of a corridor still decorated in wartime cream and green. Flashes his ID to the guard outside, who straightens, snaps a “sir,” unlocks the door, and stands aside. Striplights flicker on.

Rao wrinkles his nose. The air in here smells odd. Aromatic hydrocarbons off-gassing from plastic, he supposes. No. Whatever it is, it’s redolent of jasmine and mud. Rainwater, sandalwood. He shivers. The room is narrow and deep. Steel floor-to-ceiling shelves stacked with transparent plastic bags run along the walls, and at the far end of the room a number of bulkier bagged items rest on the floor. Rao sees leather upholstery pressed unpleasantly against taut plastic, a Yamaha 50cc.

Adam’s businesslike. “OSI forensics said there were no fingerprints on any of the items they looked at except the people who picked them up. Miller wants anything else you can give us.”

Rao pulls a pair of nitrile gloves from a box on a steel examination table, puts them on. “So far, all I know is they’re all incredibly wrong. Chuck me one?”

“Which?”

“Whatever. Doesn’t matter.”

Rao takes the bag Adam hands him, squints through it. “I think this is a Care Bear,” he decides. “It is a Care Bear.”

“It’s Funshine Bear.”

“Adam, how do you know what a Funshine Bear is?”

“Television.” Adam’s attention is focused on another item he’s pulled from the shelves.

“Bollocks. You definitely had a Funshine Bear,” Rao says, then stops dead in wonderment. “Shit, Adam, I never thought about this before. You must have had toys when you were small. What were they? Teeny plastic army men? Retractable daggers? AR-15s?”

Rao expects Adam to greet this with the usual classified silence. Unexpectedly, he answers. “Models,” he says flatly. “Scale models. From kits. Mostly aircraft.”

“I adore scale models,” Rao says. “You still have them tucked away somewhere? Can I see them?”

“No. You should look at these,” Adam says, extending his arms.

It’s a bunch of red roses.

“Appreciate the sentiment, love, but I’ve always preferred mimosas.”

“Rao.”

Rao takes the bag. The blooms are deep scarlet and highly scented: as he unzips the closure, their fragrance hits the back of his throat. He slips them out onto the table. They’re a little wilted. He peers at the card attached to a length of red ribbon wrapped around their stems. A message in cursive script, blue ink. To my Millie. Forever, like we said.

“There’s a date. Ah. The flowers are trying to tell me they’re from 1973, Adam.”

“Are they. Could you just look at them, Rao.”

They look like a bunch of roses. Although there’s something about the space between the flowers that isn’t quite— Rao frowns, pushes his fingers between the blooms, careful, exploratory.

Holy shit.

They’re roses on the outside. But inside the bunch is a monstrosity, a clumped mass of curled, soft, velvety-red vegetal tissue smeared with patches of glossy, veined green, as if leaves and flowers had melted together. Staring at it, Rao remembers a textbook photograph of a plant that had been exposed to gamma radiation and wrought itself into a growth of exuberant and incoherent horror. When he pulls his fingers back, the bouquet snaps shut strangely.

It looks like a bunch of roses.

“Are they roses?” Adam asks slowly, as if the question were not only surprising but unpleasant.

“Well. What’s a rose? Look, I did a lot of reading a long while back about the metaphysics of identity. That’s not the kind of question that comes in true or false. But there are other things I can test. Like, these flowers were cut from a plant.”

“Were they?”

“No. They weren’t. Shit. Give me something else. Something,” he says, thinking carefully, “in a box. There was a toolbox, wasn’t there? No, Scrabble. Find the Scrabble box.”

“There are two,” Adam says, peering at the inventory.

“Give us both.”

The first is an old-style set. The board is unremarkable: grey green, dotted with squares of pink and pastel blue. Wooden tile rests. Wooden tiles. The other box can’t be opened. When Adam pulls a knife and slices through one corner it turns out to be solid all the way through: fibrous, grey matter that the blade works through with difficulty. Afterwards he spends more time than Rao thinks necessary wiping the blade of his knife on the fabric of his pants, an expression of disgust on his face. He brushes at the spot on his thigh with his fingers several times, looks at Rao.

“They’re all going to be like this, ...